This dissertation focuses on the art historical praxis of one of the most significant Euro-American art historians of the 20th century, Meyer Schapiro (1904 1996). While Schapiro has most often been celebrated for his Marxist art history of the 1930s, his art historical explorations over the course of his career were part of an extended dialogue with his German-speaking colleagues regarding the crisis of meaning in art history. In chapter one, I propose that Schapiro is concerned with what I have called the politics of style, the ways in which the definition of style has been implicated in racial and national politics since the disciplines institutionalization in the 19th century. In chapter two, I consider Schapiros earliest publications and establish his indebtedness to the German art historical tradition, particularly the work of Emanuel Löwy, Wilhelm Vöge and Heinrich Wölfflin. With the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 30s, racial and national characterizations of style became increasingly pernicious. In chapters three and four, I explore Schapiros concern with fascism as it affects his art history and arises in his publications and personal correspondence including his discussions with Erwin Panofsky regarding iconology and with Otto Pächt of the New Vienna School regarding structural analysis (Strukturanalyse) and the belief in national constants. In chapter five I establish how Schapiros theorization of style as heterogeneous in his 1953 essay Style corresponds with reactions to racial and national essentialism by social scientists like cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict and modern artists. In chapter six, I consider Schapiros semiotics in relation to linguist Roman Jakobsons poetics and Panofskys iconology. My reading emphasizes both the social historical situation from which Schapiro interprets art and how his personal background as a Jewish immigrant who grew up in the working-class neighborhood of Brownsville, Brooklyn affects his interpretation. I contend that Schapiros experimentation was motivated by his desire to maintain a definition of style that recognized the unity of form and content without resorting to racial or national determinism. I conclude that Schapiros art historical struggle provides an important lesson for the contemporary interpreter of images.

The Aratea manuscripts contain Latin translations of the astronomical poem originally written in Greek by Aratus of Soli around 270 BCE. The Greek poem was translated into Latin by three Roman authors: Cicero, Germanicus and Avienus. These three Latin versions became quite popular in the Middle Ages and were usually decorated with pictures of the full cycle of constellations, a celestial map, and personifications of the Sun, Moon and planets.In undertaking this study, essential questions needed to be answered, such as: how many manuscripts survive and from what time periods? How are the three different authors illustrated? What were their models? Are there patterns to be discovered in regard to illustrations of each author? Are the illuminators reading the poem and creating images in accordance with their readings or simply following ancient models? Who was the intended audience? This body of Latin manuscripts, correctly called Aratea, had not been studied in its entirety, nor was there a catalog or listing of the pertinent information. Many conflicting statements have been published concerning Aratea manuscripts, as to their content and function in medieval society. Were Aratea manuscripts produced, collected and read for their poetic content, mythological content, astronomical content, or for their classical or historical connections? Or perhaps it was the pictorial cycle of classical gods, semi-gods, and celebrated semi-nude heroes of antiquity that should be credited for keeping Aratea manuscripts alive through the thousand years of the medieval period? This inquiry addresses these issues and attempts to clarify the content, function and circulation patterns of the three Latin poems. Therefore it was necessary to pursue the sources of astronomical art and to examine the cultural and historical circumstances that influenced Aratea manuscript production. This dissertation has attempted to pull together the numerous threads of this complex but highly-valued body of manuscripts in order to provide a more complete understanding of its role, especially in the transmission of astronomical knowledge.

This dissertation considers the artistic patronage of Dalmau de Mur i de Cervelló (13761456), a high-ranking Catalan prelate little known outside Spain. As Bishop of Girona (14161419), Archbishop of Tarragona (14191431) and Archbishop of Zaragoza (14311456), Dalmau de Mur commissioned and acquired of works of art, including illuminated manuscripts, panel paintings, sculpted altarpieces, metalwork and tapestries. Many of these objects survive, including two remarkable tapestries depicting the Passion of Christ that he bequeathed to Zaragoza Cathedral upon his death in 1456. Surviving primary documents, particularly Dalmau de Murs testament and the Cathedral inventory of 1521, show that his collection was still more significant. A major part of the dissertation is a study of the style and iconography of the Passion of Christ tapestries at Zaragoza Cathedral. They were woven in the French northern counties of Flanders or Artois in the early fifteenth century. Technically, they are among the earliest surviving examples of tapestry that comprise silk, silver and gold threads. Furthermore, they are the only surviving Franco-Flemish tapestries to have been imported into an ecclesiastical collection in Spain. Dalmau de Murs acquisition marks the beginning of an important phase of the artistic exchange between northern and southern Europe that would culminate in the patronage of the Catholic Kings later in the fifteenth century. The Zaragoza tapestries are also the oldest extant tapestries that represent the Passion of Christ. Consequently, they provide a rare insight into the treatment of Passion iconography in the rich and expensive medium of luxury tapestry during the early fifteenth century. An extensive iconographic survey reveals that the designers of the Zaragoza Passion tapestries were influenced by a select group of objects owned by the leading patrons of art in FranceKing Charles V and his brothers, the Dukes of Berry, Burgundy and Anjou. Stylistic criteria confirm that the designers of the Zaragoza tapestries were French or Flemish artists who either worked for the French royal court or knew the objects produced by French court artists.

This dissertation focuses on two miya mandara depicting the sacred geography of the Kumano region of Japan (late-thirteenth/early-fourteenth centuries). It demonstrates that the paintings were produced at Onjōji, a Tendai Buddhist temple in the eastern foothills of Mount Hiei, and owned by Shōgoin, its sub-temple in Kyoto. These temples were affiliated with the Jimon branch of Tendai associated with the esoteric cleric Enchin (814-891)), and were, by the time of the production of the mandara, in heated doctrinal, institutional, and political dispute over independence from the Tendai headquarters at Enryakuji. Three primary issues related to the mandara are addressed. First is the purpose of their production. The dissertation questions earlier claims that miya mandara primarily functioned as visual tools allowing mental visits to depicted sacred sites in place of expensive and arduous pilgrimages. Rather, it argues that the Kumano mandara were part of a larger contemporaneous discourse that included other forms of written and visual materialssuch as the Ippen hijiri-e and Tengu zōshi handscrolls, Shugen shinanshō, and petitions to courtand represented an orchestrated attempt to promote the spiritual superiority and legitimate the institutional autonomy of Onjōji over Enryakuji. Viewed within this context, two atypical features of miya mandara found in the Kumano mandara can be understood: the inclusion of a portrait of Enchin and of the esoteric Diamond and Womb World mandala. Lineage and power being inseparable in the religious and political culture of medieval Japan, the dissertation argues that the purpose of their placement in the Kumano mandara was to claim that the superiority of Onjōji was rooted in both Enchins Jimon lineage and his form of esoteric Tendai centered at the temple, and that each, in turn, valorized and legitimized Onjōjis claim for superiority over all other temples, especially Enryakuji. Finally, the dissertation takes up the problem of another portrait found in the mandara, which has been identified (without substantiation) as the Shingon esoteric priest Kūkai (774-835). The dissertation contests this attribution, which is inconsistent with its other findings, and offers possible avenues of pursuit for identifying this damaged and controversial portrait.

This dissertation situates the life and work of the artist Toyen (Marie Čermínová, 190280), a founding member of the Prague surrealist group, within the larger discourses of modernism and feminism/gender studies. In particular, it explicates Toyens construction of gender and eroticism within the contexts of early twentieth-century Czech feminism and sex reformism, the interwar Prague avant-garde, and Prague and Paris surrealism. Toyens interest in sexuality and eroticism, while unusual in its extent and expression, is intimately related to her historical and geographic position as an urban Czech forming her artistic personality during first a period of economic boom, avant-garde optimism, increased opportunities for women, and sex reformism, and then a period of economic crisis, restriction of womens employment, social conservatism, and tension between the subconscious and the socialist realist. Toyens ambiguously gendered self-presentation, while again unusual, needs to be considered in light of her enthusiastic reception within three predominantly male avant-garde groups (Devětsil, Prague surrealism, and Paris surrealism). I stress that the social and cultural environment of her childhood and youth created an atmosphere that enabled her to pursue lifelong personal interests and obsessions in a manner that was unusually public for a female artist of her generation. As a case study of one artist working within a specific avant-garde movement, this project contributes to critical re-evaluation of surrealism, the Central European contribution to modernism, and the role of female artists in the avant-garde. This intervention in the history of surrealism makes its intellectual contribution by changing our perception of the movement, giving vivid evidence of the Prague groups difference from and influence on the Paris group, and presenting a more complex and nuanced view of womens role in and treatment by surrealism. This dissertation employs a mixed methodology that combines investigation of historical context with aspects of feminist, psychoanalytic, iconographic, and semiotic approaches. No previous study of Toyen or the Czech interwar avant-garde has been done in this manner.

The opening theme to Cartoon Networks animated series MEGAS XLR (2004) exclaims: "You dig giant robots! I dig giant robots! We dig giant robots! Chicks dig giant robots!" This is perhaps the essential anthem for our fixation with out of this world technology. Japanese and American audiences in particular are innately passionate about science fiction robots, as ardent consumers and proprietors of contemporary Mecha culture. The challenge then for the academically-minded aficionado is to put across just what makes these fantastic machines and their stories so fascinating, so prevalent in entertainment and society, and so tied to our own perceptions of human development. Science fiction represents what people are thinking about technology. This thesis posits the contemporary science fiction phenomenon Mecha as the predominant expression of humankind's age-old fascination with the mechanical arts. The philosophical approaches taken in these forms of escapist entertainment often mirror the attitudes each culture has towards real-life robotic machinery- from replacement prosthetic limbs, to robotic household companions and even weapons of war. In Mecha fiction, the sentiments of the artist-citizen towards this notion of a robotic, hi-tech society are expressed free of the limitations of a practical and commercial reality. Science and engineering have not yet caught up to the culturally-nurtured imaginations and ambitions of the human spirit, and they never will. Instead, the artists and creators of Mecha consciously and unconsciously translate and magnify this social consensus into mechanical designs and narratives that enforce a particular paradigm on the overall human-machine relationship. This study examines through key written and visual texts the function of low culture pop-entertainment as an influential and relevant indicator of broader societal values and cultural traditions. By reverse-engineering and deconstructing (quite literally) these Mecha designs and how they function as a creative work, I believe we can better understand how two cultures have come to express their relationship with technology both conceptually and philosophically.

Since 1984 the Havana Biennale has been known as the Tri-continental art event, presenting artists from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. It also has intensely debated the nature of recent and contemporary art from a Third World or Global South perspective. The Biennale is a product of Cubas fruition since the Revolution of 1959. The Wifredo Lam Center, created in 1983, has organized the Biennial since its inception. This dissertation proposes that at the heart of the Biennale has been an alternative cosmopolitan modernism (that we might call contemporary or post-colonial) that was envisaged by a group of local cultural agents, critics, philosophers, art historians, and also supported by a network of peers around the world. It examines the role Armando Hart Dávalos, Minister of Culture of Cuba (1976-1997), who played a key figure in the development of a solid cultural policy, one which produced the Havana Biennale as a cultural project based on an explicit Third World consciousness. It explores the role of critics and curators Gerardo Mosquera and Nelson Herrera Ysla, key members of the founding group of the Biennale. Subsequently, it examines how the work of Llilian Llanes, director of the Lam Center and of the Biennale (1983-1999), shaped the event in structural and conceptual terms. Finally, it examines the most recent developments and projections for the future. Using primary material, interviews, and field work research, the study focuses on the conceptual, contextual, and historical structure that supports the Biennale. It presents from several optics the views and world-view of the agents involved from the inside (curators and collaborators), as well as, from an art-world perspective through an account of the nine editions. Using the Havana Biennale as case study this work goes to disentangle and reveal the socio-political and intellectual debates taking place in the conformation of what is call today global art. In addition, recognizes the potentiality of alternative thinking and cultural subjectivity in the Global South.

The Sanctuary of Demeter at Pergamon, capital of the Attalid kingdom in Asia Minor (283-133 BCE), is among the city's oldest, largest, and best-preserved monuments, and it affords a unique view into its development. The cult-site was established in the fourth century BCE and renovated twice in the Hellenistic period - by Philetairos (283-263 BCE), founder of the Attalid dynasty, and by Queen Apollonis, wife of Attalos I (241-197 BCE) - and again in Roman times. Despite its well-documented history, the sanctuary still awaits analysis as an architectural, ritual, and dynastic space, along with integration into the scholarship on Pergamon. This dissertation reexamines the precincts of Philetairos and Apollonis with the aim of reconstructing a context for the sanctuary in the Attalid capital. The investigation proceeds from a reassessment of the archaeological remains, formal and comparative analysis of the monuments, and consideration of cultic requirements. It offers a revised picture of the precinct's development by proposing new reconstructions for the pre-Attalid temenos and the building phases of Philetairos and Apollonis. It presents new evidence for narrowing the time-frame of Apollonis' dedication, making it one of the most precisely dated monuments at Pergamon. Although the lack of precise information on the cult prevents ritual identification of all structures on the site, an attempt is made to explain the precinct's ceremonial use. A focal point of the dissertation is the contextualization of the sanctuary's architectural detail. My analysis shows that the monuments of the Demeter Sanctuary were rooted in an Anatolian building tradition and that the style(s) of Apollonis' buildings elaborated on the architectural language of Philetairos' designs, conveying both unity and continuity. My reevaluation of the Demeter Sanctuary as an architectural and ritual space lays the groundwork for my future, broader investigations into the role of this cult-site in the Attalid capital - studies that address the intersection of gender, cult, dynasty, and building style in this space.

This dissertation provides an examination of the lives and works of two Russian artists: Elena Dmitrievna Polenova (1850-1898) and Mariia Vasilevna Iakunchikova (1870-1902). It takes a biographical approach to elucidate how Polenova and Iakunchikova negotiated the constraints imposed by their gender and the rapid changes occurring in Russias social structure in their search for a modern Russian art. The dissertation begins with an investigation of Polenovas activities in the spheres of social activism and art in the 1870s and concludes with both womens contributions to the Russian handicrafts (kustar) pavilion at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. While Polenovas contributions to the Russian kustar revival have been the subject of scholarly research, her activities in the broader art world have not. This dissertation seeks to remedy the skewed vision of Polenovas artistic output that has been a result. In addition, her close friendship and artistic synergy with Iakunchikova has been neglected. Iakunchikova is virtually unknown outside a small group of Russian-art specialists. Thus, an investigation of both womens work together provides a more rounded history of their contribution to Russian artists search for a modern, yet uniquely Russian, art at the end of the nineteenth century.

This dissertation uses selected works of Grant Woods art as a touchtone to investigate a broader visual culture surrounding agriculture in America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By doing so I argue that Wood engaged with pressing social questions, including the phenomenon now referred to as agribusiness. Although agribusiness is often associated with the Green Revolution of the 1940s and 1950s, its beginning dates to the nineteenth century. Indeed, Woods lifetime was an era when land was consolidated, production and distribution were vertically integrated, and breeding became scientifically informed. To access the power dynamics of this transition, I begin each chapter with work by Wood, and then analyze it in conjunction with imagery produced by or for individuals with diverse cultural agendas. This wide range of voices includes government officials, members of socialist farm organizations, newspaper publishers, plant breeders, owners of large and small farms, auction house managers, and university educators. To show precedents for and the legacy of Woods work I begin my analysis of visual culture before his birth and end after his death. The dissertation thus begins in 1862the year that land in the Midwest began to be parceled out for grain farming as small 160-acre homesteads and gargantuan bonanza farms thousands of acres in size. The dissertation ends in 1957the year that the term agribusiness was coined by the Harvard-based economists John Davis and Ray Goldberg. I take an interdisciplinary approach anchored most fully within the norms of art history, but also engage with strategies from visual, cultural, and agricultural studies. My argument, ultimately, is that agribusiness is a cornerstone of modern thinking, and that Grant Wood was not only aware of the experiences, debates, institutions, and theories of agribusiness emerging in his midst but engaged with them in his fine art. More broadly, by using a wide range of imagery, including photography, advertising, penmanship, film stills, crops, cartoons, architecture, and diagrams I show that the way Americans came to understand and accept agribusiness as the basis of their food system was negotiated, in part, through visual materials.